A Month Late and $15k Short

Turns out that Emma's birthday is actually June 27th. Oh well--so we got married on Emma Goldman's Birthday Eve; I can live with that. (I have no clue how I missed that.) She still rocks.

Speaking of a month late, my student loan is still being held up for a whirling carousel of reasons. Every time I speak with someone, I get a different reason. Plus, I don't speak with the same person twice. Plus, they don't seem to have all the clues that would indicate they know what they're doing. The upside is that I still don't have a loan; the downside is that I still don't have a loan. (The sooner I get one, the sooner I have to start paying it off, presumably; trying to find out whether that's the case seems problematic, though.) What a pain the butt.

In other financial matters, we were supposed to get paychecks today, but the president, who's been sending wads of material to potential investors, didn't come in. (She's been working like a crazy person, sending stuff to rich people who might want to own part of the company, and she lives in the far burbs, so I can understand not coming in, especially since only one of my coworkers appeared too.) Doesn't matter that much--we can't cash the checks until Monday anyway, which doesn't bode well to me. We worker bees have concluded that if the "promising" investors turn out to (a) not invest money after all or (b) not invest very much money, then we're well and truly screwed. I would not be surprised if that's the case--it's happened before, that she told us some group looked "promising" (we worker bees all say that word with air quotes these days), and spent a bunch of time wooing them, and then it looked Even More Promising! With More Money Than Ever!; and then they either didn't pan out or put in a lot less than the Even More Promising amount. And, of course, if I had the nine back paychecks I'm owed, I could probably pay for school without needing a loan. I've already decided that if we start missing paychecks again, I'm collecting unemployment. It's not much, but it's something, and by the time it runs out, I'll be done with school. I'd be able to practice more, too.

Moving on to school, today was interesting (hell, every day is interesting, if you ask me). We only made chocolate croissants, French bread, almond croissants (old regular croissants cut in half so there's a top and bottom, dipped in almond syrup, sandwiching pastry cream and covered in same, with some almonds on top, then baked), monkey bread with the croissant scraps, and MuffinMania! That is, we were encouraged to make our own muffins, bringing in anything that we needed but that the school wouldn't have around (e.g., jalapenos); we used fresh blueberries (and lemon zest) in one batch, chocolate and cherries in a second batch, and dried strawberries in a third batch. I'd say the Cherry Garcia muffins were the best of the lot. The strawberry ones were pretty good, too, and the blueberry lemon had a nice flavor, but we undercooked them (how, after 30 years of baking, have I forgotten to test products before taking them out of the oven?). One team made bacon muffins, which turned out REALLY well, and I'd say one of the winners was a raspberry-coconut muffin--the raspberry flavor was nice, and the coconut kind of came in at the end of the taste, and it was just really good.

Then we sat on our stools and the chef told us how we're screwing up (e.g., not timing products in the ovens; not turning on the ovens in time; not testing for doneness--he didn't single people out, though) and then we went through each recipe we've done in the last three weeks so we could ask questions, etc. It was extremely cool, if you want to know, and it was helpful because we've actually made everything at least once so the questions were more informed. We didn't do a massive kitchen-cleaning today--we'll do it Monday--because we ran out of time. After the discussion, we had to hustle a little to get our stuff packed up and get the kitchen cleaned up (we still had to do the daily things).

There was a little drama, too--not the part where I slipped and fell on a freshly mopped floor, though. [deleted]I understand how one gets (or maybe just feels) behind--that's been me all along here, in some ways--but I figure you just make a plan and execute the plan as well and as quickly as you can. R and I definitely improved on a number of dimensions in the past few weeks, and I felt like we made concerted efforts and they paid off. We complemented each other, too--today, she forced me to use the freezer for our croissant dough, and I'm really glad she did, because it totally improved the products. (Chef Fred noted me using it, and complimented me, so I made sure to point out, then and later, that my partner made me do it. She really was the one who deserved the credit, after all.)

I've been trying to take it at a pace at which I can actually execute reasonably well. I haven't succeeded so much in the execution, but not because the pace is too fast. I'm okay with where I am, in the sense that I can't be much better than I am right this minute, but I also have some faith that I can get up to speed on some things. I asked Chef Fred today on which things I should focus, given limited weekend time to practice--he recommended puff pastry, croissants, the hard things that take more practice. I said, well, my brioche is kind of a disaster, and he said on one of the free days (we get two free days before the three-day exam) I should come in and he'd help me with my brioche. Yesterday I told Chef Bob that I was having trouble shaping bread, so he told me to come in on a free day and make a fermented dough, and he'd come in the next day (after it had fermented overnight) and help me with that. Which, in both cases, is so cool, and which I am so going to do.

I love these guys--they really do want to teach us the art and the craft that they know and love, and that speaks to me on so many levels. Apparently, like my mother, my grandmother, my father, and my brother, I, too, am a craftsperson. We don't have much sense of that in this country--Taylorization destroyed as much of it as possible--but it's revered in other parts of the world. (I have another whole post in my head on this subject, but it will have to wait. Plus I still owe Ann a post about whether all jobs are worth doing well. Hmmmm; are they the same post? Perhaps, but they're not this post.)

Update: I took out some things that I'm not sure belonged here, in retrospect.

Happy Birthday, Emma!

Today is the real Emma Goldman's birthday (hence the url for the blog). I've been fascinated by her for many years--she advocated (and, to some extent, practiced) what was then called "free love," i.e., she regarded marriage as a property relationship. She fought for workers' rights, she fought for women's reproductive freedom (especially for the availability of contraception), she was imprisoned and deported and kept on fighting. She was brave, and, apparently a stirring public speaker (hence the fear many authorities had about her). Although she didn't say that if she couldn't dance she didn't want to be part of the revolution, she did defend the necessity for joy as a part of liberation.

I believe I've mentioned that my grandfather was an anarchist. (If I've told this story before, please excuse me.) When he died, his ashes were scattered (at sea, I believe, though he was known to say he thought they should be flushed down the toilet because he'd owned a plumbing company). There was a memorial service, but my parents told me not to attend (they didn't think it was necessary, I think; I'm a little confused on that point). At the service, a man came up to my parents and introduced himself, and gave my parents a book to give to me. It was a biography of Emma Goldman, and he had inscribed it to me, which meant my grandfather had spoken enough about me and my own beliefs such that this man knew I'd appreciate the gift. I later discovered that Emma Goldman had gotten that man out of jail. I've always cherished that connection, however distant, to Emma, through my grandfather.

May the Farm Be with You

This is an entertaining bit on behalf of organic produce; especially amusing for those of you who know/love Star Wars. (Sound must be on, and Flash is required, but it's otherwise worksafe.)

Another Post about Butter

Today we each brought home with us:

• about 24 croissants (plus we each left about 3 behind)
• two loaves of wheat bread (plus we each left one behind)
• kugelhopf and langhopf (same dough as kugelhopf, but shaped in a fancy loaf pan rather than the ceramic tube pan, plus the former is dusted with confectioner's sugar while the latter is brushed with butter and rolled in granulated sugar)
• 10 beignets and
• monkey bread, which is what you get when you take croissant-making scraps, chop it into bits, roll it around in granulated sugar and cinnamon, and then bake it in a small loaf pan

So, really, there's enough food today for the third fleet. I held back the kugelhopf and the monkey bread, and I'm going to take some of the croissants to my yoga teacher. I've got butter oozing out of my pores.

I was pleased, more or less, because our wheat bread looked good (and tasted good, too; coarse and grainy, the way I like it, but with an even crumb), our beignet earned us compliments from the chef, and my croissants weren't half bad. They'll be better next time, I hope, but they weren't bad for a first time around. Our kugelhopf was pretty spectacular, too.

I think I'm going to practice my brioche this weekend, seeing as how I bought a pound of Plugra on Sunday. I probably need more practice with croissants and puff pastry, but (a) that takes even more butter, and it ain't cheap, and (b) we're making croissant dough again tomorrow, so I'll get some more practice with that in the kitchen at school. I think I want to aim for practicing one thing each weekend, and I'll probably not practice the basic breads, not least because I have a fair amount of bread-baking experience and just need to follow these specific recipes closely. I will probably make the toast bread, though--even though it's the most basic bread--because C really liked it and I suspect The Kid will like it, too, and it's really, really easy to make. One of my classmates has a timer that allows you to time four things at once AND it clips to your belt/apron--I totally want one. I think it's the way to go--we're supposed to coordinate our baking with the rest of our classmates, and usually one person times whatever's in the oven, but I want to be one of the people who can do it, too, rather than relying on my classmates to bake and time things.

I've also decided to buy a second notebook like the one I'm using and then just copy everything over into it. That'll organize my notes on each product better, and it will matter less that the original notebook occasionally gets messy with use. (I could probably do it on the computer, in Excel outlines, maybe, but I actually think paper is more functional for this task.) That will reinforce what the chef is saying, and will also allow me to make notes on how my product did or didn't work. I want a camera, too, but that requires an expenditure of several hundred dollars that I really can't afford right now. But pictures would be good, too.

The amazing thing--and I'm not happy about this--is how it has completely changed my diet. All that low-fat, high-fiber stuff? Pretty much out the window. I used to have a bowl of wood chips and burlap bags (or their cereal equivalent) for breakfast, but I've started to skip breakfast or just have some iced decaf coffee or hot tea. For lunch I've been having a salad with a low-fat dressing plus one of the bread-like products from the day. I've nearly eliminated the hard candies; I used to eat 5-6 a day. I've been eating so much pastry--even if I try not to gorge myself, just tasting things means you have to have a fair amount. And, really, you do have to taste the stuff, to figure out whether it came out, to figure out how you might change it a little next time, whatever. I've also nearly eliminated dinner. I'm just not getting enough exercise to keep eating the way I was eating and not gain back the 20 pounds I've lost--I've already gained back a few. I don't much like this steady diet of sugar and butter, if you want to know the whole truth, but I don't see how I can learn how to make this stuff without also learning how it tastes. And, really, some of it is pretty damned good, so more than a taste seems like a good idea.

Chef Fred says . . .

Turns out, Chef Fred agreed with me about the 70% thing. We got our first evaluation today, and he gave me a 7 out of 10 (he pointed out that he'd never give himself a 10, because that's perfect). He suggested I organize a little better, double-check ingredients and so on, about which he's absolutely correct, and he complimented me on my enthusiasm and energy (I walk fast, he noted), and said I'm doing fine. He pointed out that, being a career-changer, it'll take me a while to get up to speed. I really wasn't unhappy at all--which is not to say I'm pleased with my performance, just that I didn't hear anything completely surprising or upsetting and I don't feel like I'm flailing. The other thing that helped: I did, in fact, make a strudel this weekend, using blueberries and an apple. I did what he said--cook the berries with a little sugar, to get some of the liquid out of them--and it came out really, really well. If that one had failed, too, then I would have been a little more tense, I think. My partner and I also had a really useful conversation: as we talked, we realized that in her previous (and current) occupations, she works alone, while in this one she has to work and coordinate closely with one other person and coordinate somewhat less intensely with 14 additional others, and that's an adjustment. I'm used to working with and coordinating with others, so that's less of a deal for me; I'm just glad she's so easy to work with. She thinks we switch partners at the end of this week, which bums me out. Also, Chef Fred is out of town for three days this week (Chef Bob is filling in for him), which also bums me out. (Incidentally, I've changed the chefs' names rather dramatically, as well, in case you wondered.)

Today we made three kinds of dough--for beignet, croissants, and kugelhopf--as well as blueberry muffins. Tomorrow we're going to have huge wads of product (we're also making wheat bread), and C is out of town until Thursday, so my coworkers are going to be swimming in the stuff. I'll take some to my yoga teacher tomorrow night, maybe.

But I'm tired today. We went out to dinner last night, a little later than we usually do, and I got to bed by 9:30 or a little after, but I hadn't digested everything yet, so I woke up a couple of times. Plus, it's over 85 degrees in the apartment (and we're too cheap to turn on the air conditioners), which didn't help. Getting things ready the night before is a lifesaver, though, and really helps me get out the door in the morning, so I'm glad that's part of the plan.

Our budget has gone to hell in a handbasket, too, which is stressing me out. We've spent more on groceries, largely because of fruit purchases at the farmers' market. I had to write a big check for the rest of the wedding expenditures on the credit card. C is still waiting for a reimbursement from months ago from work. We had a couple of extra purchases (baseball mitts and balls, for example, and long-needed bookshelves, and C needed three new tires for the car) that will go on next month's credit card bill but nevertheless are sitting there scowling at me. It's not like I'm digging in the sofa cushions for change, it's just that my income has been cut in half but our expenses have not been. And then I had to take a taxi to work today, because it rained--right now the sun's out, of course--and I didn't want to be completely soaked but had no umbrella. Six dollars isn't that much, but it's not nothing, either. Anyway, time to do some work.

Hacker in the Kitchen

I've often thought (and said) that I should have been a programmer. I have a certain analytical bent ("Really?" you ask), a penchant for orderly systems, and a creative streak. I like solving problems elegantly and parsimoniously (and some would regard those things as redundant, especially when it comes to programming). At the same time, I recognize that the first pass at something is, pretty much invariably, a hack. It cobbles together what you think will work, a couple of stabs in the general direction, and, if you're good and/or lucky, a large enough bit that works (or fails spectacularly) in ways that help you get it right next time around. (There's an Elvis Costello reference for you, in lieu of a Friday song.)

It turns out I'm working the same way in the kitchen. I've always done that at home, but at home people only care what it tastes like, pretty much, and enough butter will make just about anything taste good. At school, though, I've got an expert pastry chef--someone with nearly 40 years of experience of one kind and another, if you count his early years in his father's bakery--critiquing everything. Which is, of course, why I'm there, but my style of working may not make it clear whether I can actually do this well. Based on what he's seen so far, I'm guessing he has to have a few doubts. (We didn't have our evaluations today after all; not enough time.) I have a few myself, but if I can produce a couple of things on the second (or third) try that get closer to where I want to be, then I'll clear up some of my own doubts, and, with any luck, some of Chef Fred's. This weekend I want to practice a few things--strudel, for sure, given that I have the rest of our strudel dough, and brioche, if I can get the butter tomorrow, because I'm unhappy with my brioche. I need to practice the puff pastry, too, but that's just going to have to wait. I have a ton of vacation days stored up, so I'm seriously considering taking off a day a week; this schedule is grueling, and I want to get the most out of school that I can. That means I need time during the week to read the recipes, read the side notes, make notes to myself about what's working and what's not--and still give fair shrift to my employers. I envy the people who either have enough industry experience to assimilate all of this quickly and well or have enough time to go home and practice. Wish me luck with my strudel this weekend . . .

70%

Before I move on to the main subject of today's post, I'll tell you that we made lemon pound cake (to be baked tomorrow), made French bread dough (to be used tomorrow in a French bread recipe; letting it sit overnight allows it to ferment and gives it a richer, slightly sour flavor), baked the brioche Parisienne (brioche with Even! More! Butter!), baked palmier (a.k.a. elephant ears) out of leftover puff pastry dough, and made an apple strudel (including the part where you stretch the dough so thin you can read through it; I'd always heard about that, but never tried it before today). Tomorrow is French bread, lemon pound cake, and something that uses up stale brioche.

Today was a little discouraging. No, that's not quite the right word. I feel like I'm performing about about 70% of perfect. I know that perfection is not a smart goal, that it's not possible on a "production" schedule, and that it tends to vary in the eye of the beholder--that is, perfection is not what I expect of myself. It's a target, it's the direction toward which I want to move, but I do not expect to land there often, especially not in these first few weeks, and I will not berate myself for not getting to perfect. However! 70% is also not good enough for me. We're getting close, we're getting most of the things done in a timely fashion, the products taste just fine (how could they not?), and they generally look sort of okay, but there's usually something a little wrong. Today my partner almost forgot to put the butter in the pound cake; we both forgot to put the sponge crumbs in the strudel (which means it burst open a little bit and was a little mushy in the middle, because the crumbs would have soaked up some residual moisture from the apples); we rolled the brioche spheres badly such that they grew all over the place, and the elephant ears were a little tight (although, in my opinion, mine were pretty successful--more like 85%). My pithivier from yesterday didn't look great--the aforementioned hacking kind of screwed it up--and my puff pastry didn't puff as much as I would have liked.

We get our first evaluation from the chef tomorrow, so we'll see what he has to say, but I suspect it'll be similar. I'm missing details. My partner isn't going to pick up the slack on that one--she will tell you herself that it's not her strong suit--but that's not at ALL a criticism on my part. I personally think everyone needs to work on details, first of all, and, second, I know that if I'm going to have my own place, or have any kind of responsibility anywhere, I'm the one who's going to have to keep track of my shit, not someone else.

Wafflemania

We took a little (15 minutes?) break from The World of Butter to make waffles today. Yes, they, too, had butter in them, but only a little rather than big wads. We baked the pithiviers and apple turnovers, so now I have made puff pastry. It didn't puff as much as I would have liked, and, second, I was WAY too heavy-handed with the paring knife. (The top is supposed to be scored rather than hacked open.) It still tastes good, though. We also made banana bread, which used butter rather than oil (and which I greatly preferred to the usual oily glop that passes for banana bread), but not as much butter as the puff pastry or the brioche. Yes, we started another batch of brioche, too, while we were at it, with even MORE butter in it, and we made some almond syrup. (The latter two are to show us what to do with leftover brioche, I think.)

We made the waffle batter, let it rest, and then the chef had us each go up and use his waffle irons--"Table 1, time for Wafflemania!" he'd call out. He had this cool old cast-iron waffle iron and a teflon one, and the former made MUCH better waffles. (Which reminds me--I wonder what my mom did with her old waffle iron, which, I believe, was cast iron?) The chef is extremely funny--amusing more than roll-on-the-floor funny, but completely entertaining, even as he's giving us so much information our little heads are whirling around like dervishes. It's clear that he takes the whole thing quite seriously, but it's almost as though he trusts us to take it seriously, too. The jury's still out, of course, on most of us--everyone is enthusiastic the first couple of weeks--but he's giving us more of the benefit of the doubt. I suspect they figure that not many people would quit their jobs (or cut back their hours), or move hundreds or thousands of miles, or spend so much money, just to screw around or because they couldn't think of anything else to do, but we'll see.

Another thing that's interesting to me is that we were all introduced to the chefs as "Chef Fred" and "Chef Sam" and the like, and the school staff refer to the chefs that way as well. In the class I observed way back when, the same thing was true--the students called the chefs "Chef Fred" or whatever. Partly because everyone else does it, and partly out of respect, I've done the same thing--it's also worth pointing out that the chef has never corrected me and said, "Call me Fred." That's usually what people do to invite less formality than what you've offered, and, given that he's about my age, I think, I suspect he's probably still of a generation where one did not assume familiarity. Thus, I'm a little surprised that a couple of people have been calling him "Fred." He hasn't corrected them, either, but I'm not changing.

Is that a wall there in front of me?

Because that's what it feels like I've hit. So am I going to play handball, run around a bit, get some exercise, go have a nice healthy dinner and go to sleep? No. Am I going to a yoga class, so I can stretch, unwind, mellow out, then maybe have a small bite and get some sleep? No again. Am I going to a bar to drink at least two beers, because then the food is free and it's Japanese tonight from a place that B likes? Why yes, yes I am doing just that. Even though the alarm, she will go off at 4:15 tomorrow morning. B and I will leave here in an hour or so, C will meet us there (he likes the raw fish, and the place has a non-alcoholic beer available, so I thought he'd like it), and we'll do bad things. And I'll shlep my brioche for C, too.

Yesterday we made lots of brioche dough (more on that in a second) and began the puff pastry dough. Today we:

• made a pithivier with some of the puff pastry (which was cool--I've never made puff pastry before--though we won't know how it turns out until we bake them tomorrow),, which involves sandwiching almond pastry cream between two layers of puff pastry
• made apple turnovers with the rest of the puff pastry, except for the scraps, out of which we'll eventually make elephant ears (we'll bake these tomorrow, too, I think)
• baked the brioche dough we made yesterday (into a braid, onto which we drizzled sugar icing and toasted almonds when it came out of the oven; into mini-brioches, three of which had a honey-almond mixture and three of which had a streusel mixture; and into a mini-loaf, onto which we sprinkled large granules of sugar), and
• made a strudel dough

The brioche is interesting, but not what one would call a low-fat food: you basically make a dough (one that includes some butter in it), work the dough for a bit to get the gluten going, and then you work about a half a pound of butter into the dough. The dough rests in the fridge overnight, because it has a lot less yeast in it and you want a little fermentation going on. Puff pastry is similar in that it's a big wad of butter and a little bit of dough, but you surround the butter with the dough rather than working the butter into the dough.

I can't wait to see how the puff pastry turns out (or doesn't). It's one of the things I've read about but never really had the nerve to try, but it seemed to go okay today. We'll find out soon enough. I do want to practice some of these things, especially the puff pastry. It's simple enough, in some ways, but it requires patience: if you try to work the dough when the dough is warm, you'll screw it up. It's as simple as that. It's easy enough to be patient when you're in the kitchen and the chef is there and there are five million other things to be doing, but I suspect it'll be harder for me to be patient when I'm standing around in my kitchen and by the way I don't have a blast freezer so it'll take even longer for these things to get to the correct temperature.

As for my classmates, they're an interesting bunch. I think a few people have more industry (or industry-related) experience than they said up front. Several are working in the business now in some way (though one is about to quit, because it's just too much to work full time and do this thing, too, plus she has a longer commute). Several have other culinary school experience, though nothing as rigorous as this with regard to baking and pastry. I also like my partner a lot: she's a very nice person, and extremely pleasant to work with--we seem to make a good team. I asked the administrator for the school how we ended up with these partners (the first pairing is assigned, the rest get chosen out of a hat), and she said the chefs paired us up based on what we had done before we got to the school. It's a real kitchen--i.e., you have to work with everyone, whether they annoy the everloving crap out of you or not--but I'm really glad I got the partner I got.

Balance

Larry, in a comment below, wonders how "simple" fancy-ass French pastry school can possibly be, i.e., aren't I being disingenuous by yammering on about simplicity when I'm doing something that's pretty complex (in some ways, not so much in others). Here's the thing: I think that sometimes being "simple" means doing something complex. (It doesn't necessarily mean being complex, however; people who aspire to that give me the willies. It's like aspiring to being neurotic.)

It is true, of course, that I, and probably those of you reading this, have the luxury to think about these things. Despite our (at least in some cases) working-class origins or experiences, our lives aren't nasty, poor, or brutish. We have the wherewithal, and the safety net, and the means, to make more active choices about what to do with our time and energy, and none of us seems particularly inclined to give it all away, to give up the iPod and the flush toilets and the little bits of security we have to go feed people in a war zone, for example.

So, given all that--and it's a big "all that"--what shall we do with our lives? Some people like to make money--big heaping piles of it. Indeed, the gospel of capitalism holds this up as a worthy end in itself, and the South Park Underpants Gnomes' business plan applauds it as well; to make lots of money is also supposedly a sign that one is "self-made" in some important way. (This despite the fact that many, though not all, of the people we think of as paragons of money-making had a head start from a parental unit **coughcoughDonaldTrumpcoughcough**, meaning, to me, that they're not the self-made people we're supposed to believe they are. They know how to take a pile of money and make it into a bigger pile; that's not the same thing as having no money and coming up with a way to build a big pile of it. I'd argue, as well, that many people in the latter category do not have building a big pile of money as their primary motivations, but, rather, the piles of money are a result of exactly the kind of ambition and talent that people like Donald Trump and George Bush like to portray themselves as having but don't.) (Yes, I know that was a particularly long-winded parenthetical comment, even for me.) But, really, to get back to the point raised at the top of this paragraph, most of the visitors at this little blog aren't in the big-piles-of-money group, even as we're also a little suspicious of too much navel-gazing.

Here's the thing: I think there's something intrinsically worthwhile in a job well done. I don't much care what the job is (though I think we should all work toward Good rather than Evil)--I don't care if it's sweeping a floor or filing papers or making French pastry or whateverthefuck. I also think there's something intrinsically worthwhile in finding a way to occupy ourselves that not only works toward Good and turns away from Evil but that also makes us happier people. I just picked up Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (the subtitle of which is "Steps toward Enhancing the Quality of Life") from my shelf in order to get his name spelled correctly, opened the book at random, and found this sentence on page 67: "The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding." (Csikszentmihalyi also notes at the end of that chapter that flow is not necessarily good in and of itself, that it can be brought to bear in ways that are ultimately harmful in some larger sense. He notes that a religious belief, for example, may benefit a person or group but repress many others, or that a scientific advance may be good for science but bad for humanity.)

And here's where we can turn to Marx, and come back to the concepts of alienation that were so central to his work. It's not just that capitalism, for example, is inherently a bad thing: it is bad because the conditions of its existence and functioning require that some, perhaps most, people be alienated from their labor, from themselves. (Oddly enough, that's actually something that Marxism and its antithesis, Ayn Rand's objectivism, have in common: in both critiques, it's the fundamental alienation from one's self and the product of one's work or labor that is regarded as the evil part of the system.) Csikszentmihalyi notes (pp. 68-69):

So much of what we ordinarily do has no value in itself, and we do it only because we have to do it, or because we expect some future benefit from it. Many people feel that the time they spend at work is essentially wasted--they are alienated from it, and the psychic energy invested in the job does nothing to strengthen their self. For quite a few people free time is also wasted. Leisure provides a relaxing respite from work, but it generally consists of passively absorbing information, without using any skills or exploring new opportunities for action. As a result life passes in a sequence of boring and anxious experiences over which a person has little control.

Is that any way to live?

If you say no, that you want some kind of fulfillment, some kind of optimal experience, some sense that what you're doing is worthwhile, then you really do have to participate in activities that are capable of involving you, not just occupying or entertaining you.

Pipe 'til you drop.

That's what the chef told us to do.

Today was Day 3--the third and final day of "take-it-easy-introduction-week." Before I detail what we did, a brief word from our sponsors: At this school, we do NOT measure, we WEIGH. Precision isn't possible with measuring--if you measure out four separate cups of flour, no two will weigh exactly the same. Thus, we look at the assigned recipes in order to make a master list of the ingredients we'll need for all the products (so that if we need 50 grams of butter for one item, 150 grams for a second item, and 175 grams for a third item, we can get all the butter at once, rather than making three separate trips for butter); we label scaling containers (i.e., plastic containers that come in three different sizes and that have lids), using a Sharpie and masking tape, with each ingredient, its amount, the recipe it's for, and possibly for the person, if each person in the team is making the product; we weigh (or scale) each ingredient, working as a team ("I'll do the butter while you do the rum"); and we group the filled containers on a large baking sheet (parchment on the baking sheet plus the aforementioned Sharpie permits separate sections for each product (and possibly each person as well)).

After we have scaled (i.e., weighed, containered, and labeled) all of the ingredients for the day, the chef demonstrates how to make one or more of the products. Sometimes he'll demonstrate two or three things in a row, other times he'll do just one. After the demonstrations, the teams go back to their stations and start doing the stuff. My teammate R and I have been working hard to make sure that each of us gets to try everything. The chef wanders around the room, peering in at everyone's work, making corrections and suggestions, and making himself available if there are any questions. He encourages us to ask questions, and he means it, so we do, or, anyway, I do.

Today, we learned how to fold (by folding food coloring into a simple buttercream icing that someone else had made) and then we practiced piping. We packed up the icing back into the containers (we were only using it for piping practice, and someone else would use it this afternoon) and finished cleaning up. (We are strongly encouraged to clean as we go, and to not be messy to begin with; I'm pretty good at the first, as a result of throwing dinner parties in tiny apartments, but not always so good at the latter.) The chef then demonstrated how to make apple streusel filling, Bee's Sting (a sweet almond glaze), and Italian meringue. We took a fifteen-minute break (it being 9:15 am and we having been at work since 6:00 am) then got down to it. Each team made a batch of the streusel filling, and each person made each of the other two products. Today, R went first for each item--she'd make the product while I cleaned up her stuff, and then we switched. After we made the Italian meringue, we practiced piping some more. We were told to take home the meringue if we wanted to practice some more, so I did (it's a nice consistency for piping, and I need the practice); otherwise the meringue just got thrown out. At about 11:30, we began the cleanup for the day, though normally we'd start at 11:00 on Fridays (when we move all of the equipment, including freezers and ovens and the like, in order to clean the floors around it); this week my team and another one were in charge of mopping the floors, which is the last task and can't be started until everyone else is out of the kitchen.

So have I mentioned that I'm loving this? Because I am. I keep thinking of the song my friend sang at our wedding--"'Tis a gift to be simple/'tis a gift to be free/'tis a gift to come down/where we ought to be"--and thinking that maybe this really is where I'm supposed to be right now. I'm not at all a believer in the notion that everything happens for a reason; given the lack of deities in my cosmology, it's also not surprising that I'm not a believer in the notion that a deity has a plan for me. What I do think, though, is that we can find ourselves out of balance--that whole notion of koyaanisqatsi. Identifying imbalance, and trying to find balance, are processes, not events; what's balanced today may not be tomorrow. So coming down where we ought to be isn't a one-time thing, which I'm sure most of you already know.

One last thing: you know how people pronounce Target as "Tar-jhaay"? You haven't really heard that until you've heard someone with a genuine French accent pronounce it that way.

Quickie

Hi folks (those of you who still bother to check in, that is). Yes, I'm still here, but yes, I'm insanely busy. And: I sliced open my finger today! Guess all of yesterday's knife skills training didn't exactly register or something.

Anyway, yesterday was my birthday, and it was also our first day in the kitchen (the previous five days were classroom-based). Really, even though it was uneventful as birthdays go--my boss took me to lunch, and C and my stepson gave me lovely birthday cards--it was pretty damned exciting. I promise more details when I can find the time.

Imagine (Friday song)

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...
--John Lennon

I don't care if you think it's trite or cliched. I also don't care if you think I should be writing about justice or revenge. If all we can imagine is bloodlust, revenge, war, murder, torture, if we decide that's the default version of humankind, if we don't even try to think about how we can live peacefully, then we remain stuck in senseless violence (is that redundant? probably depends on how you define "senseless" and "violent"). Please understand that I have no sympathy for violent acts, whether those acts involve blowing up London buses and trains and the people thereon, or whether those acts involve blowing up innocent civilians elsewhere (in Iraq, for example, just to pick a place at random), or whether those acts involve torture or false imprisonment or inhumane treatment. I don't give a flying fuck who's doing it--it's wrong.

Ah, fuck, I keep writing bits and erasing them. Go listen to John. Go try to enact John's words today, even if only for a little while. Try to share that vision with someone else, especially someone who's annoying the fuck out of you right now. It will not have any direct effect on the people in London. It will not bring back to life or health a single person who was killed or hurt today. But it's better than adding to the violence, and that's the best I can offer.

Sugar, Butter, Flour, and Some Other Stuff

So, yes, today was the first day of pastry school. It was all the administrative stuff--getting the ID, toolkit, locker, books, uniforms (yes, including hats), and orientation. We met one of the three senior chefs and all of our classmates (there are 16 of us in each of three groups; two morning groups and one afternoon group). The people were all very nice, the food served at the end was very good (as one might expect), and the fellow students in my group are an interesting mix: three men and twelve women; six people from another country (two Germany, though one is now living in Puerto Rico; and one each from South Korea, Austria, Peru, and India), though they seem to have been in this country for varying lengths of time; I'm probably not the oldest, but close; quite a few career-changers, and not all THAT much industry experience, though they keep telling us that that's not really important. Though our normal class hours are 6 AM to noon, until next Wednesday we don't start until 7 AM, because they combined the three groups. The Harbucks (cf. South Park) across the street opens at 5:30 AM, which might be handy; I'm habitually early, which often leaves me standing around waiting, book in hand and desiring a beverage, though not usually coffee. Tomorrow and Friday are the safety/sanitation bits, Monday and Tuesday are the theory/history bits, and Wednesday we don the uniforms and head to the kitchens. Yes, it IS exciting. I have no clue how much info will end up here, or how much time or desire I'll have for posts like the last two--if you people have preferences, hey, let me know! And I'm trying to decide whether to try to buy a camera (though C might have a digital one that will suffice) so I can take pictures of the stuff; if I do, I'll learn how to post things.

1776

I'm about two-thirds through the McCullough biography of John Adams, and my love for Adams continues unabated. I know we're all supposed to love Jefferson, what with his Declaration of Independence and so on, but Adams is closer to my heart. As McCullough notes (p. 468), in his inaugural address, Adams "spoke of his respect for the rights of all states, and of his belief in expanded education for all the people, both to enlarge the happiness of life and as essential to the preservation of freedom." Adams believed that we had an obligation to develop our own talents to the fullest and to establish institutions that enabled everyone else to do so as well. Thus, slavery was wrong in part because it prevented both slaves and slaveholders (in Adams' view) from doing this.

The other thing that's striking to me, though, is the question of scale. At the time of the revolution, Philadelphia--where the Continental Congress was taking place--was a city of almost 30,000 people. According to McCullough, it was twice the size of Boston, larger than New York, and "growing faster than either." But think about that: the largest city in the country wasn't yet home to 30,000 people. The average NFL attendance is over 60,000 per game--more than twice as many people attend a football game as populated the largest city. And, really, I think that makes a difference.

I think it even affects how we govern and can be governed. The members of Congress 200+ years ago were known to their fellows. Though certainly some were subject to being corrupted, there weren't any large interests to corrupt them--no Halliburtons, no military-industrial complex, nothing like that. At the same time, there was a much more vibrant press. According to McCullough, in 1776 Philadelphia had 23 printing establishments and seven newspapers--that's a lot of printing for so few people. Issues could be, and were, debated at great length, and presumably without distractions like whether Tom Cruise is completely insane or just a little wacky. Here would be a good place for an anti-capitalism rant--because I think that the profit motive and the insular nature of big business these days ultimately works against the common person--but that's not the only thing at issue.

How representative can a government be? How does size impose limits on representability? Yes, our cities are much larger, but communication is much faster. Yes, we have fewer newspapers, and the media in general are in fewer, profit-motivated corporate hands, but there are at least a few other sources. The internet has become the equivalent of the opinion journals of the 18th century, in at least a few ways. But really, how representative can a government be? I don't know the answer to that question, but it seems worth asking.

How to Fix It?

In the comments to the last post, That Girl brings up exactly the kind of exception I mentioned in passing: her son's school is failing him miserably, and even putting him in physical danger, and the efforts she has made to change the situation haven't made a bit of difference. If I were her, I'd be yanking my kid out of school so fast that heads would spin, and, if I had any money or resources (or could get someone to take the case pro bono), I'd be filing a lawsuit, too, despite my general antipathy to the notion that litigation is the way to solve problems. From a different angle, That Girl's predicament actually reinforces my original argument--that good, free, public schools should be available to all kids. Not only is her kid not getting that, he's getting the opposite of that.

There are a number of roots to this problem. First off, the school year as we all know it is based on a no-longer-relevant agrarian calendar: summers off is a relic of a time when all hands were necessary to work the farms, and, until the 1920s, a majority of Americans lived in rural areas. (In 1910, 45.6% of the popuation was urban, and by 1920, 51.2% was urban.) A second population factor, along with the migration to urban areas, was the influx of immigrants at the turn of the last century. There was tremendous urgency around "Americanization" and assimilation of immigrants, and the public schools were regarded as one of the primary means for that socialization.

Then we have an assortment of roots related to teachers. I don't have the space to go into all of it here, but the four most important factors were (a) increased need for teachers, as populations grew; (b) the desire to pay teachers as little as possible, even while requiring extensive qualifications; (c) an effort to "Taylorize" teachers' work, thereby reducing their autonomy and making them subordinate to school boards and the businessmen who typically served on those boards; and (d) a running debate (which continues to this day) about whether teachers should have subject-level expertise or should focus on pedagogy (i.e., teaching per se). (My friend A, for example, despite having a Ph.D. in political science and extensive teaching experience, including experience developing and teaching his own courses, must go through several years of pedagogical schooling in order to be qualified to teach elementary or high school in New York.) In the 1930s, single females were urged to quit their jobs so that married males (who had families to support) could have those jobs; in many areas, women were expected to quit their jobs when they married, and certainly if they were pregnant.

In many ways, the situation faced by teachers is analogous to the situation faced by baseball players. That is, baseball owners maintained such a hold on players, through the reserve clause, for so long, such that when the players finally organized, the situation had become much more acrimonious than it might otherwise have become. In both cases, the people in charge thought they had a stranglehold over the workers, they never dreamed the workers would ever revolt, and they responded badly when the revolution finally occurred. In both cases, the mistrust and acrimony lasted for many years, and the workers ended up with many more concessions (including some that are arguably detrimental to the overall profession) than they might have obtained if the owners/school boards had been more reasonable earlier in the process. For teachers, although this has not meant much in terms of compensation, it has meant that it's much more difficult to get rid of bad teachers. At the same time, typically the only way for a teacher to make more money is to become an administrator: this is not an effective way to keep good teachers in the classroom, teaching. (There was a case in the Chicago suburbs a few years ago, where a principal was encouraging cheating. As punishment, she was "demoted" to teaching.)

And, really, teachers don't make that much, given that a four-year degree is usually the minimum acceptable qualification, given that salaries are generally capped at a certain level, and given the difficulty of the work (yes, I think being a good teacher is very hard work). According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Kindergarten teachers made an average of $43,530, elementary school teachers made $44,960, middle school was $45,600, and secondary school was $47,810. If we made school a year-round thing, and paid teachers accordingly, the salaries would be $58,040, $59,946, $60,800, and $63,746. (Average salary overall for college graduates was $45,400 in 1999.) That step alone--making school year-round, and increasing teachers' salaries to account for the extra work--would cost significant bucks.

A second step would be to reduce class sizes. Here's some research on the subject. (There's also evidence from several studies in there showing that reducing class sizes also reduces the gaps between racial groups pretty significantly.) This, too, costs money.

A third issue facing schools is the question of from where the money will come. In many (most?) places, school funding is a function of the local tax base. That means that wealthy districts will (be able to) spend much more per pupil than poorer districts, which has the long-term effect of further cementing inequalities. The wealthy-suburbs/poor-city issue becomes even more pronounced (which is another reason why suburbs get on my nerves--they do not contribute enough to the metropolitan area as a whole).

I don't know the answers--and I certainly haven't identified all of the questions. What I do know is that education is more important than anything else (yay Larry!). If you can get an education, you can envision, and then make real, a better life for yourself. If you're stuck in a crumbling school, with overwhelmed (or just plain bad) teachers and overcrowded classrooms and inadequate supplies, not to mention parents who don't know how to (or simply cannot) improve your situation, then you are screwed. A free society cannot survive if its citizens are subjugated by their own ignorance.